Impact: Mechatok

Impact is a series that's dedicated to profiling raw talent that's about to turn dance music on its head. Next up: Mechatok

Two crews have made a massive impact on underground club music over the past year: Stockholm's Staycore and London's Bala Club. Both have earned a reputation for producing incendiary dancefloor-ready tracks and their members are some of the most sought-after new DJs on the European circuit. The artists in each camp also recognise the importance of making music for moments away from the peak times, as evidenced in the euphoric highs and intimate lows of their compilations, 'Erelitha' and 'Bala Comp Vol.1', released in July and June respectively.

At the heart of the two squads is Mechatok, a gifted 19-year-old artist who specialises in heartwrenching productions and devastatingly good DJ sets. He crafts searing instrumentals (check the beautiful, gliding 'Day Lite' and the downright banging Toxe collaboration 'Still Life') and is incredibly adept at setting the scene for vocalists (Uli-K, Yung Lean, Killavessi and Rules all ride his beats on the Bala Club comp). It's this one-two that makes him such an exciting proposition and, most importantly, his music speaks for itself: the aforementioned 'Still Life' and 'Fix Up' (voiced by Uli-K) have become scene anthems.

His debut EP arrived via Public Possession in December 2015, a four tracker that drifted between club workouts and introspective bliss, and nearly 12 months on its follow up is finished and forthcoming on Staycore. This time the club is left completely behind, 'See Thru' a portal into the rich, highly emotional realm that Mechatok has previously hinted at but never fully explored. It's wildly different to anything the label has released before and all the more thrilling for it.

Ahead of the release, we grabbed a Q+A with the Berlin-based artist and he also went into the mix for us, grabbing tracks from friends such as Toxe, mobilegirl and Niclas as well as three tunes from 'See Thru': 'Linked', 'Placer' and 'Never Told U'. Hear for yourself why Mechatok is making an impact.

'See Thru' is released at the end of October via Staycore

Mechatok plays the PAN X ICA Bala Club afterparty tonight and Progress Bar Amsterdam on October 15

Your music strikes me as ethereal. Are you looking to transport people away from their everyday reality?

I’d be happy to! Or just make [their reality] appear from a slightly different angle maybe?

Strings and keys are prevalent in your tracks. Where does this interest stem from and do you play yourself?

I play the guitar and piano. Not anymore, really, but I definitely spent quite a lot of time on [those instruments]. I guess one of the things that is left from that is a fascination with the complexity of an acoustic instrument's sound, which I’m sometimes trying to recreate or imitate in my songs. It’s never about sounding fully realistic for me though.

Your instrumentals always seem to tell a story. Maybe it's because of the melodies, which always sound so emotionally charged. How do you go about writing tracks?

That’s kind of hard to say; there’s no routine that would lead to a certain type of result. It’s always about capturing a certain emotion with a melody or chord progression, going through its facets and somehow arranging that to something that works as a piece of music.

Your latest EP is called 'See Thru'. What's the concept behind the record?

To be honest, I don’t really want to explain any concept behind it. The songs were written and constantly evolved over the last 12 months, which has kind of been a special time for me. So I’m sure subconsciously all these experiences and emotions somehow have to reflect in the songs. But either way, this record should speak to the listener by itself or it has failed its point, I think.

Can you explain why the last year has been special?

I finished high school, left my family and my very distressing hometown Munich and moved to Berlin, which totally changed my life, obviously. I guess this is a phase that almost everyone goes through, but it might hit every individual differently. It made me redefine myself to something that's probably more true than what I was before. Also, since I got to travel, a lot the input I got was, like, 50 times higher than all the years before. That somehow is always going to affect my output I think.

What's so bad about Munich?

I just never managed to make that place work for me. I think a certain kind of ignorance and insensitiveness dominates the vibe there, which makes life a bit hard. The segregation between immigrants and Germans feels way more intense than in Berlin. I guess it has its cute sides somehow, especially if you're really well off financially. But to me it also felt like – culturally and musically – only established and easily-digestible things get an audience there.

That's why I have a lot of respect for Alberto [aka visual artist, DJ and promoter Kyselina], who is the only one there who always keeps trying to put on amazing line-ups, even though that whole city works against him, pretty much. I also can't deny that I met some of my most important friends there, like mobilegirl and Niclas. Some of their new songs are in my mix.

When you say you had "input" from travelling more, does that mean inspiration from other artists or from seeing new places?

Both. There was way more exchange with friends who make music or some kind of art. But also just being in many cities on my own that I haven't been to, that flipped my view on things and created a need to process this new information somehow.

The EP might surprise people because there aren't many drums. Can you explain your approach?

I guess I’m less of a producer and more of a songwriter on this EP. With most of the songs on [the record] I just felt like they didn't really need a lot of drums to work, maybe because the melodic elements already had a strong percussive quality to them. If I felt like there was a need for some kind of percussion, I’d keep [the percussion] quite minimal so they wouldn't distract from the song's essence.

Your 2015 EP for Public Possession is more metallic and industrial. How did you end up making what could be called an ambient record just a year down the line?

I made that EP when I lived in Munich. That probably made me want to write songs that feel a bit more directly confrontational and compensate for missing excitement [in other cities] somehow.

During the last year in Berlin I was traveling a lot and was just potentially always distracted, so I felt like focusing and creating something that’s way more in touch with myself and my emotions, just more me basically. In an environment where everything has a triple meaning and art is being done out of very twisted and sometimes even worrying motivations, it felt necessary to create something honest and true, which for me found its form in these sounds.

The sphere of club music that you inhabit can often be really noisy and distorted, but 'See Thru' is the opposite. Did you set out to make something that exists out on its own?

I definitely didn’t have any plan like that. It just ended up sounding this way as a result of how I felt and a certain honesty towards myself. To me making music is almost purely emotional, so there is naturally not much space left for any strategic thoughts or comparisons to other music while making it.

It's coming out on Staycore. How did you link with the crew and what influence have its members had on you?

Ghazal and Cristian got in touch with mobilegirl on SoundCloud and made her part of Staycore, so via her I started talking to them and we decided to do something together. We all got really close and I think I learned some valuable, very general lessons in life from every single member. Also learning to keep a healthy balance between me as an individual and as a group member definitely helped me grow a lot.

You're also part of Bala Club. How did that relationship come about?

It was Uli that hit me up about trying to work together. After a little bit of talking and sharing music, we started making songs. We met IRL when Uli came to Berlin to play a show, we hung out and shortly after I started going to London more often, to play the Bala parties and work on music with Uli. At some point it just felt like I was part of it, since we became really good friends and had worked together so much.

Your work with Uli-K is some of your best, especially 'Fix Up', which is like this underground pop banger. How do you two approach collaborating?

That’s really sweet to hear. It’s sometimes either him or me sketching up some chords, then Uli writes lyrics and a vocal melody on top of them, records the vocals and sends them to me. Based on the acapella and the rough chord sketch, I produce the song to its final form. Sometimes I also just send a finished Instrumental and Uli jumps on it. We mostly never take longer than a day though, so if something feels right it’s finished in a couple of hours.

Your tracks with Uli just seem to appear online as if by magic. Is there a bigger plan for you work together though?

I guess we thought they should be dropped as spontaneously and quickly as they're being made. It’s really fun and liberating to break out of these traditional ways of the music industry and just drop stuff the day its finished. But yeah, there’s something that we just started working on, which is going to have a bigger format.

It's interesting that you talk about operating outside of the traditional music industry. Have you always thought that way? It must come second nature to you, having grown up in the age of SoundCloud, Facebook artist pages, etc?

The method of just dropping songs on SoundCloud works detached from the music industry, but I wouldn't say its necessarily by choice. It just results from the fact that I didn't have access to any more professional or traditional ways of publishing music. Now that there's more options [online], it turned into something I want to keep up, just because it's the most free way to drop a song.